Confucius (551-479 B.C.) came from low-ranking nobility and grew up in considerable poverty. Perhaps that is why he seemed so sensitive to matters of class and wealth and so devoted to education as one of the means of rising in these realms.
Education is a major theme in all of his writings and this is particularly true of the "Analects." In English, this term designates a selection from the writings of a particular person, but in Chinese the book is known as "Lunyu," which means merely "Conversations." And this is what the collection resembles. It contains a large number of short passages arranged in 20 sections or "books."
These consist of various observations and reflect the Chinese fondness for pithy sayings and the belief that truth can best be expressed in aphorisms or even in slogans.
As Burton Watson, the translator of this new edition phrases it, the reader should expect no exposition of ideas but "instead, moral and political concepts presented in terms of particular individuals, the teacher Confucius and disciple or other person with whom he is conversing."
Like his younger contemporary, Plato (428-347 B.C.), the Chinese teacher used dialogue for for the purposes of education.
This does not seem to have done his official career much good. It is doubtful he ever held a governmental post of any distinction. One of his contemporaries described him as "the one who knows there's nothing that can be done but keeps on trying."
His writings, however, did create his phenomenal posthumous career, which is why he is still respected worldwide. Even, occasionally, adulated. There are reasons for this, well explained in Burton Watson's introduction to this volume. One of them is the approachability suggested by the style of the "Analects" and the other "classics" attributed to Confucius.
Though this collection probably did not attain its present form until a century after the death of its author, and though the construction seems arbitrary rather than evident, it remains the earliest attempt to preserve something like the spoken style of the period, even employing a variety of particles that lend a conversational tone to what is being said. It is this that Watson seeks to reflect in his new translation of the "Analects."
Watson is, of course, known as the pre-eminent translator from the Chinese and Japanese, particularly the earlier "classical" work. He has translated the writings of Zhungzi, Han Feizi, and others, as well as "The Lotus Sutra" and "The Tales of the Heike."
His translation of the "Analects" is not only perhaps the most faithful to the writer's intentions, but also one of the few readable ones. To indicate this I will quote from the standard translation and then from Watson's.
"The Master: 'Is it not pleasant to learn with constant perseverance and application? Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters? Is he not a man of complete virtue who feels no discomposure though men may take no note of him?"
That is the opening of the 1861 James Legge translation, still the one most quoted. Following is the same passage in Watson's new translation:
"The Master said: Studying, and from time to time going over what you've learned — that's enjoyable, isn't it? To have a friend come from a long way off — that's a pleasure, isn't it? Others don't understand him, but he doesn't resent it — that's a true gentleman, isn't it?"
With a translation like this at hand, one is equipped finally, as I have found out myself, to read Confucius and discover not an old man shaking his finger at you but a friend.
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